Coelenterazine, imidazolopyrazine, constitutes the substrate of bioluminescent reactions in many marine organisms.
In these organisms, the oxidation of coelenterazine by molecular oxygen, a reaction catalyzed by an enzyme (luciferase), is responsible for the light-emitting reaction. Studies have demonstrated the presence of coelenterazine in many non-bioluminescent organisms (Schimomura, Comp. Biochem. Physiol. 86B, pp. 361-363 (1987)).
The synthesis of imidazolopyrazine is known to a person skilled in the art from the following documents: Inoue et al., Chemistry Letters, pp. 299-300 (1980); Tiranishi and Goto, Bulletin of Chemical Society Japanese 63, pp. 3132-3140 (1990); Qi et al., Journal of Chemical Society Perkin Trans 1, pp. 1607-1611 (1982); Mc Capra and Roth, Journal of Chemical Society Chemistry Community, pp. 894-895 (1972); Inoue et al., Chemistry Letters, pp. 141-144 (1975); Inoue et al., Tetrahedron Letters No. 31, pp. 2685-2688 (1977); Qi et al. Journal of Chemical Society Chemistry Community, pp. 1307-1309 (1991); Hori et al., Biochemistry, Vol. 12 No. 22, pp. 4463-4468 (1973); Hart et al., Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communication, pp. 980-986, (1978).
However, none of these documents describes a pharmaceutical, cosmetic or food composition comprising one of these imidazolopyrazine derivatives, or the antioxidant properties of these products, or any other therapeutic application of these products.
Antioxidant molecules such as vitamins, for instance vitamin E (fat-soluble) or cysteine derivatives (water-soluble), are also used already in cosmetic, pharmaceutical and/or food applications. However, these antioxidant molecules have the drawback either of not being water-soluble, or of having an excessively high toxicity as well as an excessively low efficacy.